Many medications are offered or prescribed on an “as needed basis,” meaning the patient takes the medication only as needed for treatment (e.g. to alleviate pain). These types of medications usually have safe limits in terms of the amount of the medication per dose, the proximity of consecutive doses, and total amount or number of doses that can be safely taken in any given 24 hour period.
Prior art devices exist for tracking medication consumption, which typically provide an alert when it is safe to take the next dosage. For example, if a pain medication can only be taken once every four hours, then an audible or visual alert is provided when the four hours is up and the next dosage can be taken. However, there are several drawbacks to such devices. First, the alert serves to remind the user to take the next dose even if the user is not quite ready for the next dose. When consuming “as needed” medications, it is best to only take the medication when really needed, not when commanded or suggested that the next dose can safely be taken by a tracking device. Second, many times if doses are taken every time the minimum dosage proximity time is reached, then the safe number of dosages that can be taken in any given 24 hour period is often exceeded. For example, popular pain medications can be taken once every four hours, but no more than four times in one 24 hour period. A 4 hour proximity time period alone would call for 6 doses per 24 hours. Conventional reminder devices don't track the number of doses over each 24 hour period. This problem is made worse if the amount of each dose is varied. Therefore, conventional medication dose reminder devices are inappropriate and deficient for “as needed” medications because they tend to induce the user to take more medication, more often, than would otherwise be needed.